第40章

`Gae tak' awa' the china plates, Gae tak' them far frae me;

And bring to me a wooden dish, It's that I'm best used wi'.

And tak' awa' thae siller spoons, The like I ne'er did see, And bring to me the horn cutties, They're good eneugh for me.'

Earl Richard's Wedding.

The next day was one of the most cheerful and one of the most fatiguing that I ever spent. Salemina and I moved every article of furniture in our wee theekit hoosie from the place where it originally stood to another and a better place: arguing, of course, over the precise spot it should occupy, which was generally upstairs if the thing were already down, or downstairs if it were already up.

We hid all the more hideous ornaments of the draper's wife, and folded away her most objectionable tidies and table-covers, replacing them with our own pretty draperies. There were only two pictures in the sitting-room, and as an artist I would not have parted with them for worlds. The first was The Life of a Fireman, which could only remind one of the explosion of a mammoth tomato, and the other was The Spirit of Poetry calling Burns from the Plough. Burns wore white knee-breeches, military boots, a splendid waistcoat with lace ruffles, and carried a cocked hat. To have been so dressed he must have known the Spirit was intending to come. The plough-horse was a magnificent Arabian, whose tail swept the freshly furrowed earth, while the Spirit of Poetry was issuing from a practicable wigwam on the left, and was a lady of such ample dimensions that no poet would have dared say `no' when she called him.

The dining-room was blighted by framed photographs of the draper's relations and the draper's wife's relations; all uniformly ugly. It seems strange that married couples having the least beauty to bequeath to their offspring should persist in having the largest families. These ladies and gentlemen were too numerous to remove, so we obscured them with trailing branches; reflecting that we only breakfasted in the room, and the morning meal is easily digested when one lives in the open air. We arranged flowers everywhere, and bought potted plants at a little nursery hard by. We apportioned the bedrooms, giving Francesca the hardest bed,--as she is the youngest, and wasn't here to choose,--me the next hardest, and Salemina the best; Francesca the largest looking-glass and wardrobe, me the best view, and Salemina the largest bath. We bought housekeeping stores, distributing our patronage equally between the two grocers; we purchased aprons and dust-cloths from the rival drapers, engaged bread and rolls from the baker, milk and cream from the plumber (who keeps three cows), interviewed the flesher about chops; in fact, no young couple facing love in a cottage ever had a busier or happier time than we; and at sundown, when Francesca arrived, we were in the pink of order, standing under our own lintel, ready to welcome her to Pettybaw. As to being strangers in a strange land, we had a bowing acquaintance with everybody on the main street of the tiny village, and were on terms of considerable intimacy with half a dozen families, including dogs and babies.

Francesca was delighted with everything, from the station (Pettybaw Sands, two miles away) to Jane Grieve's name, which she thought as perfect, in its way, as Susanna Crum's. She had purchased a `tirling-pin,' that old-time precursor of knockers and bells, at an antique shop in Oban, and we fastened it on the front door at once, taking turns at risping it until our own nerves were shattered, and the draper's wife ran down the loaning to see if we were in need of anything. The twisted bar of iron stands out from the door and the ring is drawn up and down over a series of nicks, making a rasping noise. The lovers and ghaists in the old ballads always `tirled at the pin,' you remember; that is, touched it gently.

Francesca brought us letters from Edinburgh, and what was my joy, in opening Willie's, to learn that he begged us to find a place in Fifeshire, and as near St. Rules or Strathdee as convenient; for in that case he could accept an invitation he had just received to visit his friend Robin Anstruther, at Rowardennan Castle.

"It is not the visit at the castle I wish so much, you may be sure," he wrote, "as the fact that Lady Ardmore will make everything pleasant for you. You will like my friend Robin Anstruther, who is Lady Ardmore's youngest brother, and who is going to her to be nursed and coddled after a baddish accident in the hunting-field.

He is very sweet-tempered, and will get on well with Francesca--"

"I don't see the connection," rudely interrupted that spirited young person.

"I suppose she has more room on her list in the country than she had in Edinburgh; but if my remembrance serves me, she always enrolls a goodly number of victims, whether she has any immediate use for them or not."

"Mr. Beresford's manners have not been improved by his residence in Paris," observed Francesca, with resentment in her tone and delight in her eye.

"Mr. Beresford's manners are always perfect," said Salemina loyally, "and I have no doubt that this visit to Lady Ardmore will be extremely pleasant for him, though very embarrassing to us. If we are thrown into forced intimacy with a castle" (Salemina spoke of it as if it had fangs and a lashing tail), "what shall we do in this draper's hut?"

"Salemina!" I expostulated, "bears will devour you as they did the ungrateful child in the fairy-tale. I wonder at your daring to use the word `hut' in connection with our wee theekit hoosie!"

"They will never understand that we are doing all this for the novelty of it," she objected. "The Scottish nobility and gentry probably never think of renting a house for a joke. Imagine Lord and Lady Ardmore, the young Ardmores, Robin Anstruther, and Willie Beresford calling upon us in this sitting-room! We ourselves would have to sit in the hall and talk in through the doorway."